OK, so Lynton Crosby is all better now so long as conditions. What are these conditions? After all, they define the limits of acceptable behaviour in our society. It looks like he’s not allowed, or won’t be allowed, or shouldn’t have been allowed to take part in ministerial meetings or sight government documents. The interesting…
Read More Lynton Crosby briefs the Cabinet. Vomit now, it will save timeThis is the most horrid idea i've read in a long time: Osborne must publish the names of every benefits claimant http://t.co/R5Ffncye2G — Andrew Smith (@andrew_graeme) June 23, 2013 I was about to reply saying that it was OK by me as long as all landlords receiving housing benefit payments, all pensioners, and all farmers…
Read More Colour links for the last postWhen the history of this government is written, the point that will baffle everyone will be: Iain Duncan Smith. Why? On New Year’s Day, it turned out that the Universal Credit system fails to get the right bank account 25% of the time. In March, the project’s director was replaced again. The fear was such…
Read More IDS, and the spivI’m using the big megaphone this blogkend, but here are a couple of Simple Plan things. The London Labour Housing Group’s Red Brick discusses why the distinction between general government gross debt and public sector net debt is important. GGGD is internationally comparable, and excludes public corporations, which hardly exist any more but do include…
Read More Simple Plan linksHere’s someone from Policy Exchange arguing that what the prime minister needs is an internal thinktank made up of partisan Tory special advisers, not civil servants like the people in the No.10 Policy & Implementation Unit. That might cost money, but… it tends to be forgotten that some of the special advisers to the Centre…
Read More Best wanktank pitch everNick Sommerlad of the Daily Mirror, with some help from the GMB research department, has a hell of a scoop: a full third of the Right to Buy properties are owned by private landlords. And a very substantial chunk of those, in some London boroughs, are owned by Charles Gow, the son of the government…
Read More British KakistocracyThe prime minister is a godawful cricketer, and the way you can tell is that he’s trying to show technique when just moving your feet and whacking the fucker would do far better. https://twitter.com/Number10press/status/303477789837910017/ His head isn’t over the ball, his eyes aren’t on the ball, he’s forward while playing a back foot stroke, his…
Read More In the style of a national newspaper columnistFraser Nelson apparently believes he has some standing to complain about other people’s accounting. He is very angry about a Tory party political broadcast in which he says David Cameron “tells porkies”. In fact I count 12 occasions in which he accuses the prime minister of lying. Further, he says: Financiers are, quite literally, prosecuted…
Read More Fraser Nelson: HackSunny Hundal has a go at this rather floppy interview with Paul Staines. The interesting bit is right at the finish: “I think the internet means you can raise funds online in a different way. Labour goes to the union barons to get big cash-flows; the Tories go to the City. But I think the…
Read More Paul Staines Has a WebsiteIf this government had an aesthetic, it would be the YBAs’; sheep chopped in half in formaldehyde, everyone I’ve ever slept with, yadda yadda. Being “shocking”, in a highly conservative and derivative way. I submit that it is no coincidence that their biggest patron was Maurice Saatchi. Of course the great threat to the professionally…
Read More If Damien Hirst was in government nothing would be at all different